Vivian Carter Mason was born February 10, 1900. Her father was a Methodist minister and her mother a music teacher. She grew up in a mostly white neighborhood in Auburn, New York, where she experienced discrimination first hand. She was also greatly affected by the stories her father told of her grandmother's life as a slave. Carter Mason credits her parents with encouraging her and her siblings to work hard in school and insisting that they go on to college. She succeeded in school and graduated from the University of Chicago in 1925. After college she was a social worker in New York where she worked her way up to the position of Director of Social Services from 1940-1942. After being injured in a train wreck in 1942 she went to Norfolk, her husband's home town, to recuperate. During this time she began thinking about ways to reconcile the differences between the races. She began by calling women that she knew or were recommended to her, both black and white, who were concerned about racial injustice. These concerned women formed the Women's Council on Interracial Cooperation in 1945. This was the first group in the area to hold integrated public meetings. Mason served as the Council's first president from 1945-47. Mason was involved in many other civil rights organizations. In 1953 she was elected the third president of the National Council of Negro Women. During her tenure as president she helped the organization devise strategies to work toward implementation of the Brown vs. Board of Education supreme court decision. In Norfolk, when schools were closed during the massive resistance she helped educate the "Norfolk 17" by administering the school opened for them in the First Baptist Church. She became the first black woman to serve on the Norfolk city school board in 1971. She served on the school board until 1978 when she resigned to start the Urban League of Hampton Roads. Vivian Carter Mason died on May 10, 1982 in Norfolk. She is survived by her son William T. Mason, an attorney in Norfolk.

Note written by Special Collections Staff